


When the Levee Breaks

by Deannie



Series: Chasm-verse [1]
Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Cutting, Dark, Multiple Realities, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:18:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1940796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A smile, cold and bitter, came to him. Funny that he had Max to thank for finding a way to silence There, if only for a moment. Fuck, he’d never’ve seen himself doing <i>this</i>….<br/>For the hc_bingo prompt self-harm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Levee Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is sort of an AU to my AU A Chasm in Two Jumps. I wrote this as I was working out the timeline of Chasm.
> 
> It began as an idea: "What if Jake remembered both the comicverse and the movieverse?" and progressed into this fairly dark little fic and then to A Chasm in Two Jumps and then to the other fics in the series.

They caught him as he was heading back to his room with a bag from the local drug store. He’d figured they’d be at the bar by now, winding down from another successful op. He had no desire to join the party. Not tonight.

Cougar knocked him in the shoulder in his usual friendly way and Jake ignored the thrill that wasn’t really a thrill that went through him.

“You coming with us tonight, _cuate_? You’re too quiet today.”

Jake forced a smile they all seemed to believe. Sometimes he figured it was because they didn’t want to see the truth. He was falling apart, crushed under too many things in his brain.

“This from the guy who just said more words than he usually does in a week?”

“He can’t usually get a word in edgewise with you flapping your mouth,” Pooch shot back. He gave Jake a once over. “He’s right though, man. You’re thinking too much.”

“No such thing,” Jake fired back as quickly as he could, hiding the fact that the jab was 100% true. He shrugged, conceding _something_ so they wouldn’t push for _everything_. “Figured I’d take a look-see for Mr. Wilson again.”

Pooch shook his head. “I’m not gonna tell you to let it go, man, because I ain’t, for damn sure. But he’s a ghost, dude. Worse than Max was.”

“Yeah, well,” Jake murmured. “Max is dead.” So many images flooded his brain at the statement that he actually took a step back, as if he could retreat from them.

Cougar reached out a hand to steady him. “ _Tranquilo, compa_ ,” he murmured.

> _Estar tranquilo, amorcito._

Jake shook his head, giving them both a rueful grin. “Headache.” It was his standard answer since Los Alamos. It gave him space, usually. Wilson’s electroshock had caused migraines for weeks now. At least, that was what they all thought was causing them.

“Do you need me to stay?” Cougar asked quietly. Cougar Here. His best friend.

> “I’ll stay as long as you need me to, _stupido_. It’s what you do for someone you love.”

“No, man,” Jake said with a smile. “Nothing we can do, right? Docs said they’ll get better with time.” He held up the bag in his hand. “For now, Pepsi and pork rinds.”

Pooch shook his head sadly and patted Jake on the chest. He had five fingers on his left hand. Here. “And maybe give Mr. Wilson a rest for tonight?” he counseled.

_Cold black eyes, a sharp knife. Strips of flesh… One brief moment of just Here…_

“Maybe,” Jake conceded.

Cougar gave him a long penetrating look but didn’t say what Jake knew he was thinking. Coug was worried. They all were. Since Max went down for good and that spook Steigler helped them get their lives back, things should have been smooth sailing. And they were—for everyone but Jake. For Jake, the world had changed in ways he couldn’t explain to his friends.

Ways he was pretty sure couldn’t be explained at all.

“Go on!” he said, sounding light-hearted. “Look, Clay’s still trying to rebound from Aisha. God knows what he’ll find to latch onto next.”

> _You were never anything more than a means to an end…. Death to America._

Stupid bitch. Here it was revenge, There it was jihad. She’d been… volatile... everywhere, and he was glad she was dead, both Here and There. Well, maybe There.

“Okay, _hermano_ ,” Coug said quietly. Pooch nodded and they headed out.

Jake blew out a long, deep breath as his friends walked away.

He had things he had to do, and he didn’t need an audience.

 

Stripped down to his boxers, he looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. Damn, he was one ugly dude now. Thick scars deformed his right thigh. He’d worked hard in the last three months to get the limb back in working order, and he succeeded—he couldn’t have stayed a Loser otherwise—but he still limped at the end of a hard day. And he’d never hang out on a beach in Antigua without long pants.

> _“Cougar and Clay. Played to win, nothing to lose.”_

He looked at the face in the mirror, ignoring the body that didn’t show scars he knew he’d gotten _There_.

“Time to see about getting rid of There again,” he murmured to himself, reaching for the bag that contained gauze and ointment and razor blades and, yes, Pepsi and pork rinds. He wouldn’t lie to his team, after all.

He cranked Zeppelin through his computer speakers and sat down on his bed, careful to sit right in the middle of the painting tarp he’d set down. He laid out three razor blades at his side and tried to figure out where to start today.

The scar tissue on his thigh had never been a choice, even in the beginning. Extraction had taken just a little bit too long once Mr. Wilson was finished with him and the nerves were gone. Their first mission back, he’d taken a knife right to the middle of the godawful mess and he hadn’t felt a thing. Didn’t even bleed properly anymore.

At first, Jake had tried to use the older scars, the thick and funky ones that would strip off easy and hurt but be easy to hide. He hadn’t been brave enough to try real flesh then. He’d been too afraid of getting caught.

He hadn’t realized yet that everybody was trying so hard to pretend he was fine that they were doing the work of making sure they didn’t catch him, all by themselves. Or that reliving old pain didn't do the trick nearly as well as fresh blood.

“Good thing the Cougar There isn’t Here,” he murmured against the opening strains of “When the Levee Breaks.” The newer pink scar from that firefight outside of Santa Pietro in April would do. The nerves were still a little raw. “He’d kick my ass.”

But that was There. There, where Coug was dead. Where he and Cougar had been lovers instead of best friends. Where they’d shared a bed instead of women.

Where Coug was radioactive dust, settling over the Gulf of Oman…

“If it keeps on raining,” Zeppelin told him, “levee’s gonna break.”

The levee was driftwood now, man. Max and Wilson had seen to that.

“When the levee breaks, I’ll have no place to stay…”

Jake tried to focus on Here, but it was hard now—so, so much harder than it had been before Mr. Wilson and his little toy. Before the shock that left him unconscious for a day and a half and incoherent for a week after that.

Before it, There was there, but not every second. _There_ was a dream of a helicopter blowing apart over Afghanistan instead of Bolivia, a phantom pain of bullets that were never fired, an echo of love and the atomic fireball that ended it. _There_ was a paranoia that snuck up on him once in a while, a half-felt worry that maybe Roque shouldn’t be trusted, that maybe a bullet in the brain might do Aisha more good than harm. _There_ was a set of memories that didn’t fit into his skull but had been left there to yammer away at him anyway.

He lifted a razor blade and just stared at it for a long moment before putting its edge to his side, starting just above the scar of the bullet wound below his ribcage and slicing shallow and slow, down to an inch below. It burned hot, but not hot enough. Three was always the charm here, and he raised the next blade.

A smile, cold and bitter, came to him. Funny that he had Max to thank for finding a way to silence There, if only for a moment. Fuck, he’d never’ve seen himself doing _this_ ….

But he remembered lying on the table, feeling his blood slide down the side of his leg to drip to the floor, wondering where the fuck Clay was while thinking Cougar was already dead Here, just as they were both dead There. He remembered Max waving to Wilson to continue.

And he remembered that wonderful—pain-filled and fucking awful, sure, but still _wonderful_ —moment when that third strip of him was sliced off and the pain of it made There just… go away for a while.

The second blade sliced deeper now, across the whole length of the messy crease, bringing a deeper burn and a little more silence in his mind.

_“Oh, don’t tell me we have a masochist here?”_

Max must have seen the joy in Jake’s face as, for once, he couldn’t remember what had happened There.

The third razor blade, now in his hand, caught a glint of light.

“Cryin’ won’t help,” Zeppelin reminded him. “Prayin’ won’t do you no good.”

Jake shook his head. Max was wrong again—he was the exact opposite of a masochist. He didn’t want to hurt anymore.

“When the levee breaks, mama, you gotta move.”

He slid the blade under his skin, slicing slow and careful over the two cuts, over the shrieking mass of still-healing nerves, feeling There melt away, if only for a little while.

“Going to Chicago,” he whispered along with the song. “Sorry, I can’t take you.”

He lay back, letting it bleed.

“I’m going down, now…”

* * * * * * *  
The End 


End file.
